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Jeff Kaufman

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August 17th, 2025

Writing Out My Tunes

I play by ear, and when I write tunes I normally save them by making a recording. This isn't ideal for sharing, though, especially with people who are more comfortable learning tunes from dots. I last had a go at this ten years ago, and decided to give it another try.

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August 15th, 2025

BIDA Masking and Attendance

BIDA has now finished its second year alternating between mask-optional and mask-required dances. What effect does this have on attendance?

I tried to look at this in January 2024, but with only eleven dances it was hard to say. Now that we have four times as many, we can get a better sense:

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August 14th, 2025

Trialing Far UVC and Glycol Vapors at BIDA

*Cross-posted from the BIDA Blog*

As we go into winter, we're thinking about infection reduction. Our primary approaches are requiring high-filtration masks at half our dances (which we'll run another survey on in early Fall) and bringing in large amounts of outside air, but we're interested in exploring a variety of options. Two promising candidates are far UVC and glycol vapors, and we'll trial both at our September 7th dance.

This is primarily a logistical test: we won't be able to tell whether these are working for pathogen control (that's what the studies linked below are for). Instead, we're trying to get a sense for how well these fit our particular space, and how practical they would be for regular use.

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August 12th, 2025

Reference Contra Dance Sound System 2025

In 2014 I wrote up a reference contra dance sound system, with gear recommendations and rough costs. I've been thinking a bit more about gear lately as BIDA has replaced some equipment, and I wanted to write a quick update.

Many aspects have not changed: mics, stands, and cables are essentially the same gear they were ten years ago. The two places where my recommendations would change, though, are the mixer and speakers.

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August 10th, 2025

Sturdier and Lighter Pedalboard

A major part of my sound is a pedalboard. The key parts are:

- Four drum pedals, so I can play drums with my feet.
- A few guitar pedals, to play with the sound of my electric mandolin.
- A raspberry pi, which lets me combine aspects of my various electronic instruments to make new sounds.

I've been using some collection of equipment for years, and then about a year ago I made it into a more robust and permanent setup by attaching everything to a board. This was a big improvement, but did have downsides:

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August 4th, 2025

Pro AI Bots Scraping List Archives

I'm on various mailing lists, and the archives are a trove of niche knowledge. A dance calling list I'm on is considering making archives subscriber-only, to keep AI bots from snarfing up this data. But I think this harvesting is overall a good thing.

People have a range of motivations in posting to lists, but a big one is sharing information. For example, someone asked a dance with an 8-count swing followed by an 8-count chain. I replied to warn them at the form has changed and this no longer works well: this bit me back when I started calling, and I want to warn other new callers.

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